She would make her own happiness. She would . She would not have unreasonable expectations of herself. She would allow some time for grieving, but she would not wallow in her own misery. She would not become mired in self-pity.
She would do more than exist through the years that remained to her. She would live!
“I was beginning to think,” a familiar voice said, “that I would have to climb all the way to the top before finding you.”
She spun around, shading her eyes against the sun as she did so.
She had forgotten, she thought with utter foolishness, just how very attractive he was.
Chapter XXIII
She was sitting on a large flat rock in a blaze of sunlit beauty that felt as if it contracted his chest muscles and pressed on his heart. She was wearing neither bonnet nor cap. She looked like someone who had climbed to freedom, away from all those who would have imposed their standards of beauty and propriety on her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him.
“Gazing at you,” he said. “It seems more like a week since I saw you last than just twenty-five or -six hours. You have a habit of running away from me.”
“Lord Rannulf,” she said, removing her hand from above her eyes and clasping her knees again in a tight, protective gesture, “why have you come here? Is it because I left without a word or without even writing to you? I have written, you know, to both you and the Duke of Bewcastle. The letters are ready to send.”
“This one is mine?” He held up the sealed sheet addressed to him in her neat hand.
“You have been to the house V Her eyes widened.
“Of course I have been to the rectory,” he said. “Your housekeeper admitted me to the sitting room, where I met your mother and your three sisters. They were all charming. I could easily distinguish the one you described as the beauty of the family. But you were wrong, you know. Her beauty does not come close to matching yours.”
She merely hugged her knees more tightly.
“Your mother gave me this,” he said, indicating the letter. With his thumb he broke the seal. She half reached out a hand to stop him, but then pulled it back again. She dipped her head to rest her forehead on her knees.
“ ‘Dear Lord Rannulf,’” he read aloud, “I cannot even begin to thank you for all the kindness you showed me from the time I left Harewood Grange until yesterday.” He looked at her bent head. “
Kindness, Judith?”
“You were kind,” she said. “Exceedingly kind.”
He glanced through the rest of the short letter, which continued in the same vein as it had begun. “
‘Respectfully yours,’ ” he read aloud when he came to the end. “And this is all you had to say to me?”
“Yes.” She looked up at him then, and he folded the letter and put it away in his coat pocket. “I am sorry I did not stay to say it in person, but you should know by now that I am a coward when it comes to saying good-bye.”
“Why did you feel you had to say good-bye?” he asked her. He sat down on the stone beside her. It was warm from the heat of the sun.
She sighed. “Is it not obvious?”
As obvious as the nose on his face—and that was obvious enough. She was a proud, stubborn woman, and yet paradoxically she had very little confidence in herself. It had been squashed out of her by repressive parents, who doubtless meant well, but who had done untold harm to the daughter who was a swan among their other ducklings.
“The Duke of Bewcastle is my brother,” he said, “and he is a haughty aristocrat, as high in the instep as any monarch. He wields power with the mere lifting of a finger. Freyja and Morgan and Alleyne are my sisters and brother, and they dress grandly and bear themselves proudly and behave as if they are a cut or two above ordinary mortals. Bedwyn House is one of my family’s homes, and it is a rich and splendid mansion. Only Bewcastle and Aidan stand between me and the dukedom and fabulous riches and properties and estates stretching over vast areas of England and Wales. Have I come close to describing half of what is obvious?”
“Yes.” She did not look at him but gazed off down the hill.
“The Reverend Jeremiah Law is your father,” he continued. “He is a gentleman of moderate means and rector of a less-than-prominent living. He has four daughters to provide for on a competence that has been severely depleted by the extravagances of a son who has not yet settled to earning his own living.
He has moreover the embarrassment of being the grandson on his mother’s side of a draper and the son of an actress. Have I described the other half of what is obvious?”
“Yes.” But she was no longer gazing down the hill. She was looking at him, and he saw with some satisfaction that she was angry. He would take her anger over her passivity any day of the week. “Yes, that is it exactly, Lord Rannulf. But I am not ashamed of Grandmama. I am not. I love her dearly.”
“I would think so too,” he said. “She thinks the world of you, Judith.”
“I’ll not be your mistress,” she said.
“Good Lord!” He looked at her, aghast. “Is that what you have thought I am offering?”
“There could never be anything else between us,” she said. “Can you not see? Did you not see? Even the servants at Bedwyn House were grander than I. Everyone was very courteous to me and Lady Freyja and the Duke of Bewcastle were marvelously kind in their efforts to help me. But they must have been aghast at my appearing among them.”
“It would take a great deal more than that to shock any of the Bedwyns,” he said. “Besides all of which, Judith, you are not being asked to live at Bedwyn House or with any of my brothers and sisters. You are being asked to live with me , probably at Grandmaison, as my wife. I do not believe my grandmother would allow me to take you there as my mistress. She is a stickler about such matters.”
She jumped to her feet then, though she did not immediately move away.
“You cannot wish to marry me,” she said.
“Can’t I?” he asked her. “Why not?”
“It would not work,” she said. “It could not work.”
“Why not?” he asked again.
She turned then and strode away, choosing to go upward rather than down. Rannulf got to his feet and went after her through short, springy grass that was very green from the recent rain.
“Is it because I may be with child?” she asked him.
“I almost hope you are,” he said. “Not because I want to trap you into marriage against your will, but because I would like to fulfill my grandmother’s last dream while she still lives. She is dying, you know. It is her final wish that I marry before she does and it is her dream that my wife and I will present her with a grandchild while she still lives.”
She had stopped walking. “This is why you wish to marry me?”
He lifted one hand and set his forefinger beneath her chin. “That question hardly dignifies an answer,” he said. “Do you not know me better, Judith?”
“No, I do not.” She pushed his hand away and resumed her climb. The slope was getting steeper, but her pace was relentless. Rannulf took off his hat and carried it at his side.
“You told me yourself that marriage was for wealth and position only, that all your true pleasure would be taken outside of marriage.”
“Good Lord, did I say that?” But he had, he knew. He could remember saying it or something similar.
Even at the time he had not meant it but had merely meant to shock her. “Did you not know that Bedwyns are not allowed to carry on extracurricular activities outside their marriage beds? There is some rule in the family archives, I believe. Anyone who transgresses is banished to outer darkness for the rest of eternity.”